SPORT THE STRATHPUFFER
Who’d be mad enough to want to ride a muddy, freezing trail for 24 hours in the Highlands during winter? Plenty, as it turns out.
Te annual Strathpuffer mountain bike event took off thanks to social media
BY KEVIN O’SULLIVAN “I
just thought it was a daft idea,” says Steve Macdonald, laughing down the phone. “Who would want to take part
in a 24-hour mountain bike race in Scotland, in winter?” It’s a fair point, but Steve is
reflecting on a conversation he had 11 years ago, which kicked off what’s become the most popular outdoor mountain biking event in the country. Te Strathpuffer, as it’s affection-
ately known, has grown steadily each year since it first took place outside the tiny Victoria spa village of Strathpeffer in Ross-shire.
Initially publicised by Steve with
posters pasted on his bike shop window, the event had no seed capital and therefore no budget for advertising, but if you’re looking for an explanation of why it now attracts almost 1,000 competitors every January, and about the same number of spectators, you need look no further than the internet. “It went viral, I really think social
media virtually doubled the num- ber of people to what we attract now,” says Steve. “For years we got around about
400 competitors, which was kind of maybe not quite break even; it was a struggle to sustain it. But with Facebook and Twitter taking off we noticed very quickly that people were starting to discuss it online and post photographs, their strate- gies and things.”
THIS YEAR WAS the first that it has attracted national funding from
18 | EVENTSBASE | MARCH 2016
Event Scotland. Tat’s the reason why we’re having this conversation in the first place, after Scott Peddie, PR manager at Event Scotland, puts me onto it. So I feel bad when I hear the an-
swer to the inevitable ‘how did you find the application process?’ ques- tion, which secured £5,500 to pay for new cabins for its volunteers. “It was horrendous,” says Steve,
laughing again. “We probably did about £10,000 worth of admin to get it,” he adds. It’s not quite the response I was hoping for. “Te Event Scotland funding did
A legion of loyal competitors, including TV’s Guy Martin (above), flock to Ross-shire for the annual event, won this year by Keith Forsyth. Photographs by Gary Williamson
help; it paid for better facilities for marshals so it did have a good out- come. But we’re probably just not very good at applying for things like that. None of us have had that kind of background.” Steve recalls the early pre-Face-
book days when the event, which now attracts competitors from Ger- many, Spain, Italy, the US and Aus-
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48